Unfortunately I just sold this to a member here and after he cleaned the lens this was revealed
It does not look good at all and I suppose it is an example of a scope living inside an observatory.
I am giving a refund on the purchase but now wondering what I can do with this? I don't know exactly what the damage is, I guess it looks like the coating has been eaten away at multiple spots all over the objective.
Has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing? I am guessing that sending it back to Tak might be uneconomical.
Any ideas how much this has actually damaged the performance of the scope if I was to try and sell it at a reduced price?
wow thats nasty, you could have it cleaned professionally but if its been like it for a while the coatings may have been eaten, someone here will recommend somewhere to have it cleaned then youll know if its cactus or not, dont leave it long like that. Value? thats a fair bit of the value right there but might be fixable.
what did it look like before he cleaned it? what did he wipe it with? & yes a better shot will help
its had to tell but doesn't look like etching of the coatings to me - might be a reaction from some chemical with the coatings -hence what did he clean it with
It looked like lenses do when you know condensation had formed on them. It lived in an observatory, with the cap on when not in use but I had also trapped a spider in there that decided to **** on it a dozen times.
That seemed to come off OK. I did remove one spider doo to make sure there wasn't an issue there but for all my years in astronomy I had been told not to clean a lens unless it required it so I left it as it was and let the buyer do it if he wanted to.
In hindsight (of course!) I would have saved myself hundreds in shipping if I had decided to send it all cleaned up and found the problem first. Oh well...
Jason, I don't know what he cleaned it with but I would assume that if it was cleaned with something corrosive that it would have got rubbed all over the place rather than in spots.
the coat ins is hard, it would have to have been applied at the factory incorrectly to be rubbed off - hence it looks like some type of liquid either sitting there (from drying) or a reaction of moisture/chemicals
What the hell did he clean it with? You may be taking a hit for a mistake someone else made.
It was cleaned only in a few spots to remove spider **** and then only with warm water on a cotton wool pad in a few spot locations. No chemicals were used at all. Not everyone is a complete idiot.
Here is a crop from the centre of the objective.
It was cleaned only in a few spots to remove spider **** and then only with warm water on a cotton wool pad in a few spot locations. No chemicals were used at all. Not everyone is a complete idiot.
Here is a crop from the centre of the objective.
Definitely looks like old damage doesn't it, and growth rather than just deposit. I hope it can be saved........
Can you email the photo to Tak directly. Their boffins might have some idea.
(If you told me that photo was of someone's cornea, then I would have suggested that the diagnosis was herpes keratitis.)
You can get herpes in your eyes?!?
Those ones lower down in the cropped shot look like the coating has been eaten, but hard to tell from the photos.
I'd contact Takahashi and send them photos, they may have an idea to try re cleaning. I guess its possible that it could be sitting on top of the coatings, but I wouldn't be feeling super optimistic.
Would suggest perhaps something's grown on the lens from spores(?). Perhaps the addition of water was enough to activate them but not to remove the spores. Or possibly crystallisation from a solution around seed points? Those star shapes definitely look like either something living or something crystallised out of solution. But am really no expert at all - though I've seen 1cm lichens growing on an old uncleaned primary mirror that was left for a decade .
The more I look at it, the more it looks like crystallisation - maybe salts from the water, or produced by the mix of water and whatever was on the lens surface pre-cleaning?
Would suggest perhaps something's grown on the lens from spores(?). Perhaps the addition of water was enough to activate them but not to remove the spores. Or possibly crystallisation from a solution around seed points? Those star shapes definitely look like either something living or something crystallised out of solution. But am really no expert at all - though I've seen 1cm lichens growing on an old uncleaned primary mirror that was left for a decade .
The more I look at it, the more it looks like crystallisation - maybe salts from the water, or produced by the mix of water and whatever was on the lens surface pre-cleaning?
I hope you can find a way to fix it!
the theory overlooks that the lens was not cleaned across it's whole surface. As I said, it was spot cleaned with water only in the few locations where spider poop was. The growth, whatever it is, is across the entire lens surface - edge to edge.
So whatever it is, it has been there for some time, it is related to some common cause, loks fungicidal and is uniform across the whole surface.
Peter
If you did not see the actual spider - that's fungi growth. Looks like spiderweb, too. And it affects the optics profoundly - if left for too long. The only way to find how much damage was done is to clean the stuff off professionally - you don't want those spores all over your house, and primary cell assembly and collimation is a smart business in refractors. Considering the possible cost of all of this - not much resale value there might be. Sorry.
As a best case scenario, after you pay the cost of fixing it - you'll have a good scope back. Tak may be worth it.
P.S. It's not the first time I hear about this problem with Tak. Does it mean anything?
I really wish I could find the thread on Astromart by Roland Christen (Astro-Physics) that covered a lens recovery that was in a similar, possibly worse condition, to this lens. I believed it used Acetone, Prurosol and human saliva.
Last edited by Hans Tucker; 06-06-2012 at 07:31 PM.
Talking of saliva, I know of 2 very exp bino users/cleaners that finish there bino cleaning with hot breath always with a eyeglass lens cloth, it removes all cleaning marks apparently
thats nasty, you could have it cleaned professionally but if its been like it for a while the coatings may have been eaten, someone here will recommend somewhere to have it cleaned then youll know if its cactus or not, dont leave it long like that. Value? thats a fair bit of the value right there but might be fixable.
